The response of the American (and European) Left to Stalin and his policies is an interesting sidelight issue. The realization of some that Stalin and Stalinism were no different from Nazism resulted in a schism in the Left, with a relatively small number of true believers maintaining their loyalty to the Soviet Union and the American Communist Party. The list of loyalists is a revealing one - Alger Hiss is one example. Even today there are apologists for these marxo-fascists

Stalin was a fascinating man or, morally speaking, monster. He strikes me as quite different from Hitler. For starters he often used a facade of modesty which, I think none of the other war-lords used much. FDR seems to have tried charm first and both Hitler and Churchill would often be very confrontational with aides, generals and colleagues.

If this great admirer of Winston Churchill (and with an equal measure of contempt for Hitler to match that) puts all moral judgments aside and try to look just at their modus operanti as leaders, Stalin and FDR seem to have used scheming extensively whereas Hitler and Churchill seem to me to have been more blunt and up-front. Of course Churchill and Hitler too had their little secrets but it doesn't seem to have been their first choice, in contrast w FDR and Stalin.

There is no doubt that Stalin has considerable skills in politics and intrigues. The question we will never know is whether Stalin really had appetite for a new giant war, with Britain, America and the newly liberated countries of Europe. Even in the absence of nuclear weapons I doubt that he would have done that. For one thing he must have had a deficit of young men to fight it with after the bloodletting of WWII. But a monster clearly.

The West is slowly coming to understand that World War Two on the Eastern Front was not a confrontation between good and evil, but between two totalitarian monsters, Hitler and Stalin, who were allies against the West in the period of 1939-1941. That is why the Russians don't use the term World War Two, but Great Patriotic War 1941-45(when Hitler betrayed and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941) to avoid the 1939-41 alliance where many Eastern European peoples were repressed by both Hitler's forces and Stalin's.
Stalin did indeed murder more people than Hitler (though Stalin had longer to kill). The argument can be made that Nazism was more the threat and evil, but this still doesn't dissipate the fact that the difference between Nazism and Communism was in degree, not kind, and who the victims were, specifically the Jews and Gypsies for the former. Robert Conquest once famously said Nazism just smelled more evil. Nazism was extermationist, but this still does not obviate the fact that Stalin ran a genocidal regime too as in Ukraine during the Famine. Stalin was a genocidaire as Norman Naimark called him.
The Western Allies were different in kind to the totalitarian superpowers.
The moral dimension of the war between Hitler and Stalin needs to be studied further in the West and the severe choices the people of Eastern Europe had to confront between Russia and Germany. It ultimately came down to the lesser evil.

It was nothing but good that Germany lost the war. Otherwise Germany never would have got rid off the Nazis at all.
But in their ideology the Nazis were still causing great harm to the German people. Instead of opening the Eastern fronts and allowing the Red Army to enter Germany the Nazis were regarding the Red Army as a worse enemy as the Western Allies.
And so the Anglos could occupy Germany until today.
If Germany would have had the great chance being freed as a whole by the Red Army, Germany would have become a free, peaceful, neutral and democratic country just like the EAstern part in 1948.
But the German politicians in the West were so naive by relying just on their worst enemies which have been by a very long tradition, Britain, the USA and France.
The Red Army has left Germany in 1990 while masses of British and American occupation troops are still stationed in Germany and it was nothing but silly to believe that just Britain, France or the USA ever would forget about two world wars they had with Germany.
Together with the Soviet Union, Germany would have had a real chance and Austria that was trusting in to the real humanity and generosity of the Soviet Union, became free and neutral in 1954:)
Germany could have had the very same development but they preferred to create a new army only a few years after WW II which have been never anything else but Anglo-American mercenaries.
And it was nothing but a silly idea of the old German politicians to believe that they ever would become again a respected member in the circle of European countries.
Quite the contrary happened. The rifts and contrasts in Europe have been increasing more and more and we see today how the rifts and contrasts are growing day after day.
Joining the EU or NATO did never change anything in regard of the reputation of Germany - it was causing nothing but more hatred and hostility in Europe by focussing all hostilities against Germany as we see now.
The Soviet Union was the only country from WW II which has been prepared to real conciliation with Germany although they had the biggest losses of all allied nations.
It was the most fatal error of German politics believing that they ever could be again a member among European nations.
Today the facts give me right and so Germany should now draw the consequences by leaving all Western alliances and return to strict national neutrality with strict borders and a strict stop of immigration.
By immigration Germany is nothing but importing its own hatemongers.
Germany has enough for itself and Germany can do very well without the rest of Europe and first of all Germany has nothing to do at all on the international stage of politics because foreign problems never can be any kind of a German business.
Perhaps in September Germany will be so lucky leaving the Euro and the EU and then the rest of Europe - if in the North or in the South can do as they like and look for a new scapegoat.

You wrote: "If Germany would have had the great chance being freed as a whole by the Red Army, Germany would have become a free, peaceful, neutral and democratic country just like the EAstern part in 1948."

Are you serious or was this intended as a substitute for April Fools joke ?

The German Democratic Republic was without any doubt a peaceful country.
And the Red Army was the guarantee for peace in Europe.
Just have a look at the example of Austria:)
Just as promised the Red Army was withdrawing from Austria as well as the rEd Army was withdrawing from the East of Germany.
To my big surprise I still do see today everywhere huge masses of highly armed British and American soldiers everywhere in the streets of Western Germany:)

I agree that Communism was a great evil but I am not sure I agree quite with this:

"the difference between Nazism and Communism was in degree, not kind, and who the victims were, specifically the Jews and Gypsies for the former."

Unlike Communism, Nazism sought a radical demographic change in Europe where whole peoples were simply to be wiped out. The whole "Ostplan" after the war that consisted basically of eradicating one of the three great "columns" of peoples from Europe, the Slavic one, was diabolical to a degree that Communism couldn't really match. Of course Nazism, like most other ideologies, *could* have "mellowed" after a victorious war, say if Albert Speer came to power. But not if a man like Himmler took over once Hitler went to push up daisies somewhere in Bavaria.

Communism never sought to exterminate whole nations on ethnic grounds but rather to turn them into "good Communists." There's a difference between wanting to change the way you think and simply wanting to exterminate you. That cannot merely be a matter of degree because the fact remains that there were a Poland, a Czechoslovakia and a Ukraine to be liberated from Communism. Had the Ostplan been carried out there would have been no Poland or Czechoslovakia to free from Nazism. They would simply have vanished.

"The German Democratic Republic was without any doubt a peaceful country

Yes, except that their 'peace' had to be guarded by the 'Berlin wall' with thousands of machineguns in watchtowers from the north to the south. And as soon as the gates opened tens of thousands of Germans took the first chance they had to flee the GDR 'paradise'.

"..I still do see today everywhere huge masses of highly armed British and American soldiers everywhere in the streets of Western Germany"

Hey, you are way behind the times, there is no longer a Western Germany, there is only the Federal Republic of Germany. Oh, and you have failed to notice tens of thousands of Russians, armed with Euros, Dollars and Pounds on the streets of Franfurt, Rome, Paris and London. That's the best guarantee of peace !

There are a few little things that I know that might help you understand what actually happened:
1. The British started this war too early. It was clearly known that his intention was to attack Russia in the long run.
2. We for some unknown reason gave our support to Stalin. I think that the intention was to kill both of them off. It didn't work.
3.We could have ended the war by letting the German's surrender. Instead we pulled our troops out and gave victory to Stalin.
4. Hitler started giving direct orders to attack and keep going until you win. Hitler was not well and this is what decided the end of the war.
4. Truman saw the problems and this started the cold war.
5. We did nothing to help the Germans and let everyone take what they had. This was wrong. The Russians did horible things which we could have prevented.
6. Every one went crazy and there is nothing we can do about that. We should all be shamed and help each other and at least now the Germans can make peace with themselves.

'I still do see today everywhere huge masses of highly armed British and American soldiers everywhere in the streets of Western Germany:)'
what you don't say is that this with the full backing of the German government. They were left there originally because of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. They are there now as part of the Nato alliance.

Why make such a prediction? It was inevitable that they would lose, one way or another. The combined resources against them were too large. If the West had not supported Stalin, the two countries would have bled each other to death, the Allies overrun Western Europe and the German survivors made some sort of truce with the Allies.

THE STALIN PLAN:
1. Take all guns from the citizens. Only the government shall have guns
2. Take (tax) all the fruits of labor away from the workers...and then return a small portion of that fruit (wealth) to the worker as government benefit in exchange for obedience to the state.
3. End by force...all religion. You shall worship only the state.
4. Full control (regulation) of business.

Tryworkingforaliving - while I certainly have no desire to stick up the brutal dictator, Stalin, one should always be careful about how they criticize others, given the old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

If I remember correctly, Adolph Hitler hated Stalin and the entire Soviet Union, as shown by his decision to invade the USSR in the summer of 1941.

Are you saying that your views on the problems of the Stalin era are aligned with those of the Nazis?

One of the prominent organisations that is now subject to Putin's police investigation is Memorial. It is involved in identifying and releasing information on millions of cases of executions by Stalin's NKVD-GPU, information so far held sectet in NKVD-GPU archives. Slowly at least some documents have been released about some 720,000 people who were shot during Stalin's purges of 1937-1938. Many were simply tried and summarily executed by Stalin's "troikas" (military tribunals) run by the secret police.
Recently some information has been made public about some 44,000 people who had their sentences personally approved by Stalin and his closest henchmen.

As reported by RIA Novosti, Stalin's initials, scribbled in bright red pencil, appear on 357 execution lists. He was a busy man.

"Stalin's Executions Lists" is an updated version of a collection first released by Memorial in 2002. All 4,000 files are now located in RGASPI (the Russian State Archive of Social-Political History). Readers interested in Stalin's 1937 - 1938 purges and other mass exacutions will have plenty to read in these archives.

They contained the names of former White Guard members and other rivals to the Bolsheviks, as well as cultural figures, technical specialists and military elites. But ordinary workers also wound up under Stalin's pen: Alexei Zheltikov, who was shot in 1937, was a metro mechanic.

Well, I don't know, but I'm always extremely wary when an author tries to delve into an individual's soul. I think trying to fathom the inner Stalin (or rather Ioseb Besarionis je J̌uḡašvili - copied from Wiki, so so sorry for possible misspelling) is as pointless as trying to delve into anyone else's most intimate self. It's usually much easier to guess what individuals don't believe in, and if the author says he was cynical, that's good enough, though obviously much, much more than all the rest. Or rather he was so much more successful than the rest. Because as far as Russian tsars go, in terms of evil intent, he actually has competition, one predecessor was even nicknamed "the Terrible", but in terms of "success", including the body count, he's tops. Perhaps it'd be more constructive to take a closer look at the moral state of the West, say, for the last two centuries, and the most recent hundred years in particular.

Poor Russians, for having to have suffered leaders like Stalin and his minions.Anyone could have landed in a gulag for a minor reason, like telling a joke or being in a right place at a wrong time, and with a very small likelihood of surviving the imprisonment in Siberian winter. If that didn't drive people to drink, then what would?

Putting Stalin together with Hitler on the same list as monsters is controversial already.
But putting Lenin together with Hitler on the list of 3 monsters is in my opinion nonsense.
How do you compare Hitler and Lenin?

Lenin was a ruthless as Stalin although not in the same scale. Surely whether a person murders 1 person or 10 million they are still a murderer? Putting Stalin in the same category as Hitler is not unreasonable.

' Surely whether a person murders 1 person or 10 million they are still a murderer?"

So by that token should we recognize Churchill as one of the great mass murderers of the 20th century? He certainly turned over thousands to be shot by Stalin, and allowed millions to die in a famine in Bengal...

The difference is that a person deliberately planning the killing of one or more humans is a murderer. The Allies (it was not just Churchill's decision) felt that had no choice but to send back Russians who had been imprisoned by the Germans if they wanted to get back all Allied prisoners of war liberated by the Red Army from German camps. In the context of the messy and chaotic aftermath of an unimaginable world-wide war they made what they felt was the pragmatic decision.
As to the Bengal famine, the causes of this are complex but Churchill himself is not directly or even indirectly responsible despite the claims that he could have diverted merchant ships to carry grain to Bengal. This was 1943 and he had many priorities to weigh up. If any single factor was responsible it was the decision by the other provincial governments in India not to allow grain sales to Bengal so as to protect their own populace.

The THREE Greatest Enemies of the Russian People in the 20th Century were Hitler, Stalin and Vodka.

However for the past 60 years, of the three, only Vodka was still active, decimating the populations, destroying families and poisoning the workforce.
______________________________

Today, the greatest enemy of the Russian people, killing more citizens, shrinking their population with more devastation than any war, and holding back their economy today is not America, China, Islam, Chechnyans, or Terrorism.
Their greatest threat is an internal demon that also plagued the Soviet Union:
ALCOHOLISM.

_____________________________

America and NATO Allies faced the Soviet Union in the Cold War for over 50 years. And it turned out the most important factor in the demise of the Soviet Union was not nuclear weapons, superior armies, or diplomacy; it was internal disintegration. And it was Vodka corrosion.

-Alcoholism has killed more Soviet soldiers than NATO ever did.
-Vodka as a weapon was more effective than the B-52, F-15 or M-16 weapon systems (--combined!), for Soviet army decimation.
-At any one time, 30% of the Soviet army was drunk or hungover. And that included the nuclear launch forces!
-Alcoholism is the biggest source of accidents in the Russian fleet grounding ships and keeping the Russian ships in port for 90% of vessel life. Sailing is too dangerous.
-Did the Mujahadeen beat the Soviets or just their own drunkeness?
-Alcoholism caused more Russian deaths than those due to both Stalin or Hitler's Genocide--Combined!
-Boris Yeltsin was drunk or hungover most of his presidency. Other top leaders drink vodka like Coca-Cola.
-Alcoholism today is shortening Russian lives--which is exceptional in modern nation.
-Alcoholism is shrinking the population (Russia is now smaller than Pakistan.)
-Alcoholism is the leading cause of mental retardation and birth defects in Russian children.
-Alcoholism is the leading cause of Russian family disintegration.
-Alcoholism is the leading cause of accidents in the Russian Space Program.
-Alcoholism is the leading cause of violence, major disability, paralysis and automobile deaths.
-Alcoholism is the leading cause of school, factory and government absenteeism.
-And Alcoholism sabotaged Soviet Industry and Economy more than any trade policy, sanction or CIA plot.
_____________________________

Today the Russians are considerably wealthier than in Soviet times. But their life expectancy is shorter with more ill health. Wealth has brought them luxuries but also abundant imported alcohol, and it is killing them.

If we were smart, we may have ended the Cold War a generation early if we simply Imported Subsidized Vodka to Russia. OR just given it away for free as a token gesture to the Soviet Army. --That would have cost less than half the price of one B-1 bomber. And would have fueled millions of Non-Communist Parties.
____________________________

Over 70 years ago, Churchill said of the enigmatic Soviet Union, "It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma:
... but perhaps there is a key: Russian self interest."

=> I propose an alternative key. Give the Russians what they rally want...inexpensive high quality vodka.
Flood the market!
Allow them widespread cheap great vodka cheaper than water.

If only Stalin drank more Vodka, the Russians would be happier, more populated, more functional, and more prosperous today of Stalin died of acute alcoholic poisoning as a young man.
_____________________________

We cannot predict the Politburo. But we can predict the behavior of alcoholics => And that is bankable.

Alcoholism is a major public health issue in Russia, but a lot of the demographic destabilization that it assisted was caused by the economic and social dislocations caused by the dissolution of the USSR. And the demographic trends have stabilized, so arguably alcohol is no worse than it has always been in Russia...

libertarian13...while I as a finance professional in a market economy certainly do not support Marxism or communism, you may want to be careful when you suggest that communists, who believe in public ownership, also therefore believe in sharing one's wife with other men. By that same token, the communist could argue that we as capitalists harbor no concerns about selling our wives into prostitution...as we are just led by profit anyways.

libertarian13...I guess an additional comment would be that, while I certainly am not aiming to defend Marx or communism as I am a happy member of the financial community in a market economy, I would think one should not critize Marx for what his economic theories had become as much as they should criticize the Stalins, Maos and Castros of the world. I am by no means a scholar of Marxist literature, but Marx really did not order these leaders to slaughter their own citizens by the millions. Blaming Marx for the Stalins of the world is like blaming Adam Smith for the Enrons or Lehman Brothers of the capitalist world. These firms abused a system that, for the most part, was used well (and legally) by millions of firms to enrich themselves and to the benefit of the societies in which they operated. Of course, a successful Marxist/communist system was always more difficult to create and maintain due to the problems in such a Utopian system. However, the horrible reality that communism became in the 20th century was more the result of the many brutal authoritarian leaders who used the system's weaknesses for their own diabolical means.

the communist could argue that we as capitalists harbor no concerns about selling our wives into prostitution...as we are just led by profit anyways.

Actually they couldn't because selling your posession such as a wife would be at a loss, and incongruent with the profit motive and rationality. However, communism is the complete opposite where there are no personal posessions be it wife or home. Curious you never defended the home.

I am impressed at your ability to link a slight problem of a market correction that is a byproduct of capitalism and only exascerbated by government intervention where some people lose money and jobs to something as disgusting as communism where everyone lives in abject poverty and anyone who opposes the leadership is herded like a sheep to the slaughter house.

Capitalism allows people to make choices, risks, and decisions. Communism/Socialism/Fascism forces those who produce and invent into slavery and death. If that is your version of utopia, perhaps you should really sit down and think about your moral objectives. Do you really believe that, under the right leadership, that forced behavior will ever turn out "right"?

"Actually they couldn't because selling your posession such as a wife would be at a loss, and incongruent with the profit motive and rationality."

While I would agree with your analysis if you are talking about my wife, whom I love very much, I am not sure such an argument would hold up in all marital cases. I can imagine there are definitely some spouses out there who would gladly sell their "better half" should the price be right. Certainly they get rid of them in divorce court when a deal that is right has been struck.

Again, I am not supporting communist or Marxist ideas. However, I think some blinders are being worn when you offer comments on the great system we know as capitalism. It is true when you say that in communist thought, there are no personal possessions be they a wife or a home. I definitely think that is one of the major flaws of communism, as you probably do. However, we should remember that capitalism also had some not-so-nice periods within its own history, such as slavery. Capitalist thinkers did not seem to have too much trouble seeing such an economic system exist within the confines of market economies, with the US only exiting such a system in 1863, and only because its citizens decided to go to war to stop it. It should be remembered that the concept of "personal possessions" also existed in slavery, with human slaves considered as "property", to be bought and sold and with family bonds being ignored as owners sold parents and children separately to a variety of different bidders. I am sure those slave owners saw themselves as adhering to capitalism, with some priding themselves on the profits they made from buying low and selling high.

Despite that, I love capitalism. I practice capitalism at work every day. I defend capitalism. However, I am not willing to ignore the sometimes unsettling parts of its historical development just so I can draw a starker contrast between it and communism. Communism was a bad system, for many, many reasons. However, communism's flaws do not translate into capitalism being a flawless system. I would rather work on improving capitalism than beating up on communism. Pointing out the flaws in communism is both ridiculously easy and incongruent with the ideas of individualism and confidence upon which capitalism is founded.

"Communism/Socialism/Fascism forces those who produce and invent into slavery and death. If that is your version of utopia, perhaps you should really sit down and think about your moral objectives."

I think I have made it clear I harbor no love for communism. Please do not put words in my mouth, and if you can find a quote from my comments in which I state that I admire systems that force people who produce into slavery and death, then please paste it here. Simply because someone does not agree with another person who has decided to stop thinking critically about both the drawbacks as well as the positive aspects of a system, in this case the capitalist system, does not make the person one who despises the system of capitalism itself. Indeed, it is such critical thinking that has helped a great system become even better. In capitalism, one should always strive for improvement, whether at the individual, company or system level. Self-satisfaction and ignoring problems in the system I think is what brought most communist systems down.

As to your comments about about "a slight problem of a market correction that is a byproduct of capitalism", sorry, but are you kidding? The downfall of Lehman Brothers nearly brought the global financial system to its knees and plunged economies around the world into recession, as well as helping many stock markets tank for the next several months. I should know because I work in the financial and securities industry. Moreover, Lehman Brothers was but one of several major institutions that helped create what was to become a global financial crisis. While you can argue that the crisis was exacerbated by government intervention, there are many argue that it was a lack of government oversight that allowed the firm and others like it run out of control and that intervention after the crisis occurred helped stabilize the situation. I believe it is somewhere in between. Certainly there are regulations out there which harm more than help companies grow and that moral hazard increases when failed institutions are bailed out. However, I also believe many people know a few (or more) companies that would go wild should there be no regulations. Again though, being specific on which "government regulations" are useless and harmful probably should be clarified if one is going to make that claim.

It seems a bit harsh to identify Stalinism with communism, in reality it's just state capitalism. Communism is a great doctrine and has many favourable qualities. But it's never been truly implemented. Marx would have been ashamed this had been done in his name. Calling yourself a communist as Stalin did doesn't make him a communist any more than the USA calling itself committed to world peace makes it so.

You're right on a basic level, after so long it's in our bones. Communism to me is a perfect dream but maybe that's all it is. But then again should we not try to make it? I mean people there will always be world hunger but do we not fight to end it? Maybe we just need to take baby steps towards communism, but I doubt we as humans have the stomach for such a struggle.

Many small Communes have been created on local levels and are mildly successful. But it only works on small levels, once it gets large enough for people to be strangers, the altruism begins to disappear.Small communes may offer a Utopian level of living, but they in no way provide for societal advancement on a larger level compared to our present situation.

It's no more flawed than any other system of government really. Liberal democracies have promised to give equality, peace, fairness to their people and by and large been unsuccessful. How many working class people do you see in powerful positions in Britain for example? The more radical the idea, the more extreme the flaws. Communism is certainly radical so it makes sense that so many people have died.

A perfect dream - where you do nothing all day while someone brings you food and makes your bed and studies for years on end to be a doctor only to be rewarded the same as a janitor? As a law of psychology - rational people think at the margin. Therefore everyone will sit on their butt and we will end up no better than the dodo bird.

I have a dream too. Leave me alone and stop trying to sell me Jesus, Social Security, and Global warming. I will take care of myself and family - you do the same.

How many people have been killed though by capitalist governments. How many people were killed by the colonial empires? The excesses of Stalinism were terrible but how many people were killed by the west in Africa and India? So what is the difference? Well Stalin mostly killed Europeans were as the west killed African and Asians. The west is quick to neglect a man-made famine in India one year after WW2 I think we should try to create this world of equality and liberty, I accept that it's very unrealistic in a practical sense, but we shouldn't just say that everything was bad about communism. Communism has made China, Russia, Cuba what they are today and I would argue that living conditions were far worse during the industrial revolution than in the communist nations of the world. Not to mention the fact that most people from communist nations are happier than in the west. At the end of the day isn't that what really matters?

Communism is a utopian doctrine, which echoes fascism in its attempts to make society, and man, "perfect." As a totalitarian doctrine it is easily -- inescapably, really -- subjected to misuse and this misuse has led to some of the greatest crimes the world has ever seen.
Everything about communism in the Soviet Union was bad, it was a brutal dictatorship, it subjugated entire nations and peooples, repressed them, killed them and stifled them. That is why Soviet communism collapsed with hardly a whimper and is relegated to the trash heap of history, deservedly so.
China, Russia, Cuba - really, you must be joking. These are among the most backward countries in the world, despite the size of the former two. If not for communism China would be the most powerful country in the world long ago and Russia would not be the backward, anemic petro-state it is today.

What does it matter if it's 'backwards' if the people are happy? The greatest crimes the world has ever seen were committed as much by the west as by communists. Empire, slavery. You are kidding about China? For years China was dominated by the Kuomintang and under communism shortened a hundred year industrial revolution into 30 years. The arguments that being made seem to be on different wave lengths. On the one hand there is world power, economic power and historical bias. Communism isn't perfect but what system is? Western democracy is a giant illusion really, can a poor working class person rise to the top of the ladder? Maybe but very rarely. The leaders of political parties are just selected by a powerful oligarchy who make sure the right people get nominated to ensure the continuation on the fundamentally unfair neo-liberalist economic model. At the end of the day, what does all the money in the world mean if you're not happy? Communists nations are happy and that's an uncomfortable reality for the west and it's people that despite all the stuff... It's just not enough to make us happy.

It matters because there is reality. If people live in mud and waste, but are content because they do not know any better that is not a state that is desired or desirable. Full stop.
China began to develop seriously only after Deng Xiapoing adopted elements of capitalism, which harnessed private initiative to some extent. Again, you make the same exact silly arguments, or what passes for arguments, that do your two aliases, YoungWeber and HyunSmith. Industrialism could have been introduced by a chimpanzee, it involved simply imitating the processes going on in the West. That is no achievement and China's extreme poverty across wide swathes of the country is well documented.
You seem to have forgotten North Korea, another pillar of communism, where people actually starve, many of them, every year.
And finally, go live in North Korea, find your happiness there, but no, you won't, because you are a hypocrite and not only a liar.

Marx was a Marxist. Lenin and Stalin were Communists. They recognized, unlike Marx, the necessity of the use of coercion to implement the communist state. There policies were not aberrations, but the natural consequence of communist ideology.

"Post war famine in the Soviet Union" is a bit too wide of a concept. The majority of deths happened, only to a lesser extent than in 1932-33, in Ukraine. So it wouldn't be incorrect to call this, second, famine, a Ukrainian one as well.

That is not correct. Firstly, the link you reference refers to the famine of 1947, not the Holodomor of 1932-33.
Secondly, even in the 1947 famine, a much disproportionately larger number of Ukrainians died.
The link you cite estimates the number of deaths from the 1947 famine in the Russian and Ukrainian republics as follows:
"Then the total excess deaths in 1947 for Russia were 391,000 + 57% of 88,000, which is 441,000. A similar calculation for Ukraine give an estimate of
291,000 1947 excess deaths."
The USSR did not conduct a post World War II census until 1959, in order to hide its horrendous losses of human life during the war. The results of the pre-war 1937 census were destroyed and its organizers were sent to GULAG prison camps in order to hide the consequences of the Holodomor. But, given that it can fairly safely be assumed that the population of the RSFSR was about 3 times higher than that of the Ukrainian SSR, correspondingly the number of excess deaths for Ukrainians in 1947 should have been 145,530, not the indicated 291,000. This represents a difference of a 50% higher death rate for Ukrainians, in the 1947 famine. This, of course, does not take into account other, significant factors, such as Ukraine's status as a "breadbasket" where, accordingly, death rates should have been even lower.
Of course, the death rate for Ukrainians in the much larger and horrendous Holodomor famine of 1932-33 was far, far higher than for Russians.

TE: "...what Stalin did achieve was quite bad enough".
Stalin achieved final victory for the Allies in Europe by winning the battle of Berlin. Stalin's achievement meant the Allies would not endure a Stalingrad like fight with all the casualties associated with urban warfare.
That achievement even caused Germany to surrender and bring about the end of WW2.

You are obviously one of the few Stalin's admirers who swallowed Kremlin's propaganda line not unlike the Russians swallow a bottle of vodka. The effects are similar, - you have lost all perception of a balanced judgement. And your knowledge of WWII history, and of the events of the spring 1945 in particular, is on Grade 2 public school level. Go back and read at least ten reputable history books, discard all Kremlin-published propaganda you have collected.

Enola Gay is right. It was Churchill who said "The Red Army ripped the guts out of the Germans." As for the Battle of Berlin, Ike wanted no part of it because he suspected it would result in 100,000 American casualties. And, 100,000 Russian casualties is what it took to capture the city.

By themselves, it is doubtful if the Americans and British together could have liberated Europe. The Germans were better soldiers and had interior lines. Then, too, American and British societies were not willing to accept the massive casualties that victory over the Nazis required. (The British learned their lesson in WW I -- the working class wasn't going to be slaughtered twice in a generation.)

The Russians had far more reason to fight (their country was invaded) and if they weren't especially skilled soldiers there were a great many of them, they were terrified of the NKVD (and would rather die fighting the Nazis than from a bullet in the back of the neck) and, finally, Stalin simply did not care how many of his own citizens he killed -- so long as he won.

Historians uniformly credit the Red Army with 80% of German casualties. Whether the Russians could have take Berlin without the western allies is debatable. That the western allies probably would not have made it to the Rhine without the Russians is far more likely.

Communism was one long criminal act against mankind. Stalin was a blood-soaked monster whose only modern rivals in evil are Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao. But, it was the Red army that destroyed German military power.

Your long winded explanation misses the point. Enola said: "Stalin achieved final victory for the Allies in Europe by winning the battle of Berlin". That's nonsense. The outcome of the battle of Berlin was predetrmined months before. Your estimates of 100,000 potential Allied casualties in taking Berlin are at best a post-war fantasy. Hitler no longer had any Luftwaffe and few Panzers to speak of. We are not talking about German overall war casualties or about Stalin's desire for revenge, - that's obvious. Berlin was surrounded, with remnants of German divisions ('reinforced' by 17-year old Hitler Jugend) without ammo or food supplies and with most ready and willing to surender to the Brits or the Americans if they only had that option. We are talking about Enola's judgement that it was the Soviet winning Berlin that "caused Germany to surrender and bring about the end of WW2". Hitler's suicidal strategies and his own suicide brought about the end of WWII. Why, do you think Goering, who wanted to succeed Hitler, had some 'secret weapons' to prevent defeat ? He just could not see himself being paraded on Moscow's Red Square. By the time Hitler was dead, most top ranking German leaders were busy seeking an escape route abroad or at least a way to surrender to the Western allies, not to Stalin's bloody armies.

There is no need to excessively glorify Stalin's Red army, which by the way, was not "Russians", but an army or air force manned by men and women of many nations and races mobilised into what was known as Soviet army. What is is with some of you people with your repetitive references to "Russian army" "Russian front", Russian this, or that ? Can't you guys learn to use historically proper terms ? Hitler's German Reich was fighting Stalin's Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There was no Russian State, no Russian flag, no Russian hymn, no Russian marshals or generals. Its that simple.

Enola Gay and you are absolutely correct. The Red Army took the brunt of the Nazi offensive almost single handedly for 3 years (starting with the Soviet invasion in June 1941 to D-Day June 1944). The number of casualties that they bore were unimaginably large. Some of the battles in the run up to the drive on Moscow in 1941 alone killed more Russians than all American deaths in all of WW2.

But please consider the fact that the Russians -and Stalin in particular - were perhaps most responsible in the first place for WW2, only after Hitler and the Nazis. Few things that hugely facilitated Hitler's plans and strongly argue against the Russians getting so much credit -

1. Stalin's purges of the Soviet Armed Forces in the late 1930s - The Russian army had its head cut off - virtually every top and middle ranking army officer liquidated. Had it not been for this stupid and evil act by Stalin - right when Nazi Germany's active and enthusiastic rearmament was no secret - it is doubtful that Hitler would ever have had the gall to invade Poland (which the Soviets and their political predecessors) considered to be firmly within their sphere of influence.

2. Stalin's horribly cynical pact with Hitler in Aug 1939 - The diaries of Hitler's closest lieutenants reveal that he was terribly worried about Germany's vulnerability on the Eastern Front when he carried out his plans invading France and the Low Countries. Germany was far less militarily prepared for WW2 than she was for WW1. And even with all plans going perfectly in April-June 1940, the Russian army had a several week-long window to literally walk into Berlin - just as the French army had had on the Western Front for six weeks during the Nazi invasion of Poland. Hitler simply did not have the forces to fight a two front war and would arguably never even have attempted it had it not been for Stalin giving him a free hand in Poland and subsequently the West.

3. The complete political paralysis that pervaded the Kremlin for weeks before the Nazi invasion in the spring of 1941. The Soviets had arguably the world's best spy network and they were even warned by the English and Americans about Nazi plans to invade. Heck, as the invasion date drew closer, Hitler did not even bother to hide his forces (well it is awfully hard to hide the largest invasion force the world has ever seen until then - an army of a million men). Despite all these warning signs which would have been obvious to even a child, not only did the Soviets not retaliate, they did not even prepare. When the Nazi invasion came, entire Soviet armies, hundreds of thousands of troops were encircled, completely unprepared. The Germans destroyed more than 2000 Soviet airplanes sitting on the airfields in the first 4 weeks alone! As tragic as these events were, there is a big difference between fighting valiantly and diligently (as the Soviets later would) versus being captured en masse due to complete stupidity on one's part. These weren't the last-stand Battle of Stalingrad or Kursk style deaths. These were "we were caught sleeping" casualties.

So in summary, yes the Soviets should get a great part of the credit for defeating Hitler. I have often actually said that Russia alone beat Germany - the D-Day landings and what followed were merely the last nails in the coffin of an evil empire than had bet most of its forces against Russia.

But there is a strong case to be made that were it not for Russian recklessness, stupidity and last but not the least, their evil pact with the Nazis, WW2 would never have taken place to begin with. Its a case of "Give me credit for solving the problem that I had a huge hand in creating"

You may not agree with Enola Gay (and I don't) but an argument is severely diminished by resorting to low personal blows, name-calling and making over-the-top assumptions about someone one hasn't even met or seen.

Everyone who has a different viewpoint is not deluded. They may even be wrong or mistaken but that can be pointed out in calm polite manner. Having read other posts in this thread by you - which were well written - its rather surprising that someone so well informed on this topic as you are would automatically assume that everyone else knows as much as you do about it.

You seem to have a short fuse. We refer to the "Russians" to include all the USSR. When we speak of the English we mean, as well, the Welch, Irish and Scots. When we speak of the French in WW2 it includes their numerous Moroccan and Algerian soldiers. FDR, Churchill, Eisenhower and Harry Hopkins habitually referred to the USSR as "Russia."

The end of Berlin was, indeed, a "foregone conclusion" -- if one was willing to expend 100,000 men (and, no, that figure is not postwar "fantasy." It appears in virtually every reputable military history.) For that matter the victory at Iwo Jima was a foregone conclusion. Care to have gone ashore with the Marines?

The top-ranking German leaders were not all busy "seeking escape abroad." Unbelievably, Adm. Doenitz, Hitler's successor as Reich Chancellor, remained at his post and as late as a week after VE Day was still holding "cabinet meetings" in northern Germany! Many, such as Himmler, ran like rats but others -- Doenitz, Speer and Goering among others -- pretty much stayed where they were and continued the war effort to the bitter end. On the purely military side, German generals such as Henrici were commanding capably (if forlornly.)

The war did not end with Hitler's (overdue) suicide. That happened on April 30 and VE Day did not come until May 8.

The Red Army was incompetent in the summer of 1941. By the spring of 1945 it was a rock-hard professional fighting force. It destroyed most of the Nazi war machine. That is not "glorification" -- that is history.

You seem intent on obtusely insulting people. Since when were the Irish "English" one can only wonder. The habitual reference to everything Soviet as "Russian" is due to simple and exorbitant ignorance. The Soviet Union was a prison of nations, it held captive peoples who had separate identities and who had to be brutally repressed in order to prevent them from escaping this prison.
As for the "professionalism" of the Red Army in WWII, such a conclusion can only be drawn if one is brainwashed by Soviet propaganda. The real state of affairs is well known, a poorly equipped fighting force which drove soldiers who were often unarmed -- yes, unarmed -- into a fusillade of German bullets. That's not professionalism, that's suicide. And yes, it took several dozen million deaths (yes, that many) of Red Army soldiers to sap the strength of the German Army. If that is laudable, then... words fail me.

Had not studied that angle. It could be the Soviets wanted to finish Germany off so they could do exactly what they did, take over half of Europe.

However you look at it, Stalin got the better of that weak-minded old fool, FDR, who opined, "that if I give him [Stalin] everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace."
Noblesse oblige, indeed.
Sounds like an idiot very similar to this "youngweber" poster to this thread. lol

"When we speak of the English we mean, as well, the Welch, Irish and Scots."

How ignorant can you get ? You have never heard the term 'British' ?
Did the Canadians and Australians also fight as 'English'?

"When we speak of the French in WW2 it includes their numerous Moroccan and Algerian soldiers."

That's when YOU speak of French ! As well, why don't you learn about a difference in the pre-WWII status of Algeria or Morocco vs. Canada or Ireland ?

"FDR, Churchill, Eisenhower and Harry Hopkins habitually referred to the USSR as "Russia."

Being 'habitually' confused was a trademark of FDR and Churchill. The Imperial connections with Russian Tsars made the results well known.
But people of your generation (much younger than FDR !) had decades to learn historic facts. Where have you been all those years ?

This book is written by an American, and it is reviwed by an extremist rightwing British magazine. It is the same if a Stalinist write a book about Truman and his USA or about Churchill and his British Empire.

The main problem of all books on USSR written by the Anglo-Americans the extreme bias and fabrications, which make all their books are nothing but propaganda. Who is going to believe all these?

To start with the author thinks that Communism is a distesteful doctrine. A member of the Taliban or Iranian Government can say the same about USA. What should we accept?

In short this is the opinion of an enemy. It is not an authentic history at all.

If you are a member of the Taliban or an Iranian Government's agent why don't you identify yourself as such. Its not that "the author thinks that Communism is a distasteful doctrine", it IS a criminal doctrine. The evidence of 70 years is there for all to see. Except people intellectually blind. Or paid agents.

Totally agree with you. I feel exactly the same way about any books written on the Nazis by Anglo Americans.

Its all Western propaganda that Hitler was evil. I'm sure the Nazis would have the same to say about Americans - that America or maybe New Zealand caused WW2 and Germany was forced to "defend" herself. Hitler was probably a nice gentle guy after all.

Truth be told, I don't even believe all this rubbish Anglo-American "science". Newton and Darin were English and I'm sure you will agree that they had every reason to try and conspire against other cultures that had other beautiful mystical explanations about why objects fall towards the earth or how men came into existence. Gravity? Evolution? Bah! Why? Just because they say so? I'm sure if rocks or monkeys, better still if fairies or monsters, could give us their perspective, they would contradict these theories.

It may offend more than a few Western (and particularly French) nerves to cast Stalin as Soviet equivalent of Robespierre, but that seems to be the conclusion of this books, and I see no obvious objection to that theory at a first glance.

I think what's more fascinating is not the criminality of Stalin and the Communist regimes worldwide in general (which are obvious, self-evident truths), but how western intellectuals were hoodwinked by such atrocious doctrine. Many household names were enthralled by this murderous ideology well after its crimes were revealed to the world, and uttered some astoundingly stupid, immoral things in public to defend the Soviet Union. Examples that come to my mind are E. H. Carr's "Might makes right" approach to the Polish-USSR antagonism after the WW2, or Jean-Paul Sartre arguing that Stalin's crimes should not have been made public for fear of discouraging the proletariat.

But then I guess many right-wing intellectuals were also enthused by fascism. Terrible times.

"The foreigners thought Stalin was a curmudgeonly ally to be coaxed and cajoled. He treated them as enemies to be outwitted. Far from provoking Stalin into unnecessary hostility, the Western powers were not nearly tough enough."

Empty words! Tougher with Stalin! Churchill and FDR lucked out on SURVIVING HITLER who had the UPPER HAND until he threw away every strategic advantage by gratuitously declaring war on the Soviet Union and then the United States in 1941 WITHOUT any provocation.Stalin's Russia was the great Meat Grinder for the almighty Wehrmacht and knew it. The Western Powers handled Stalin quite well and got millions of German Goosesteppers killed WITHOUT getting Millions of American GI's and British Tommies killed. They also got a STABLE postwar Europe. The Bomb killed any temptation by Stalin for an Occupation of Western Europe up to the English Channel as George Orwell and even Winston Churchill feared.

This is a complete misreading of the situation. There are also two fundamental errors in your argument. Firstly, the US came into the war because Japan attacked it, not because Hitler did. And the British and the French only came into the war because Germany gave them no choice when she invaded Poland.

Which leads to the second error in your argument - have you never heard of lebensraum? The Nazis had long planned to invade the Soviet Union to create an empire to the east. By happy accident, they could also recover German land lost in the Great War. The invasion of western Europe was an accident and the resulting war was very unlucky for the British and the French, damanging permanently their status as great powers in the world's eye.

To avoid war with Germany, the British and the French were pushing the Polish government to accept Germany's demand for a plebiscte in the Danzig corridor and allow Germany to regain East Prussia with its majority German population. The allies wanted a negotiated settlement with Germany and instead they got all out war.

The only foolish thing Hitler did was not to keep pressing for the plebiscite. If he had eventually got it through democratic and peaceful means, there would have been no need for a war with the West. So there was no luck at all here for the allies. The outcome between Russia and Germany would probably have been the same whatever happened. The Russians were actually helped by a British and American attack on Germany's western front caused by Hitler's rashness.

There are glaring historical misstatements which make me wonder if you know the basics. Hitler DECLARED WAR on the United States on December 8,1941 to the COMPLETE astonishment of the Roosevelt Administration! It was like God had finally given Humanity a break! The Congress had NO intention of authorizing War against Hitler.

Second, Britain and France could have blown off Poland like they blew off every other Hitler land grab. Hitler expected that! They didn't, but Hitler was prepared for that as well with his Pact with Stalin! Hitler didn't want a piece of Poland, he wanted ALL of Poland including its JEWS: to eliminate. He was crazed but so was ALL of Germany which surrendered all rationality to his EVIL SPELL. He was determined to EXTERMINATE the entire population of Slavic lands and repopulate them with specially breed Siegfrieds and Brunhildas from his Lebensborn Program and create a SUPER RACE which would control HISTORY forever!! A Valhalla on EARTH.
If this sounds totally crazy: it is, but the Germans from Nobel Prize winners like Heisenberg to the Person in the Street bought and owned EVERY WORD of this BLOOD EVIL! No one can claim humanity is surely destined for great things after this disgusting spectacle! Humanity might succeed but it is more likely to fail and not too long from the present.

Absolutely agree with you except that Hitler ultimately wanted the German empire to extend far beyond Poland and into what is now the Ukraine. Hitler and the Nazi's knew full well that the vast agricultural empire in the east they intended to make was lived in by millions of Poles and Slavs who would have to be got rid of. Invasion of Russia was always in the plan.

Glaring historical misstatements? Uh... On 11 December 1941, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany declared war on the United States, the same day that the United States declared war on Germany and Italy.
Source: A Chronology of US Historical Documents. Oklahoma College of Law.

The sudden defeat of France in spring 1940 caused the nation to begin to greatly grow its armed forces, including the first peacetime draft. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, America began sending Lend Lease aid to Russia as well as Britain and China.

American warships escorting Allied convoys in the western Atlantic had several hostile encounters with U-boats. On 4 September, a German U-Boat attacked the destroyer USS Greer off Iceland. A week later Roosevelt ordered American warships to shoot U-boats on sight. A U-boat shot up the USS Kearny as it escorted a British merchant convoy. The USS Reuben James was sunk by U-552 on 31 October 1941. Source George W. Baer, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U. S. Navy, 1890-1990.

The US had steadily been preparing for conflict with Germany since its victories in Poland, France and the Battle of Britain. Hardly a surprise. And I'm not sure what history books you're reading, but getting simple dates wrong doesn't inspire confidence. Perhaps there was a misprint in the Dummies Guide you used.

Yes Hitler declared war 1st and the US immediately replied the same day. Roosevelt understood the imperative to defeat the grave threat Nazism was to the world but the isolationist tendency in the US Congress was strong and so he could only wait until Hitler declared war before the US could formally enter. Prior to the declaration of war Roosevelt had done what he could to aid Britain through the Lend-Lease arrangements and also as a neutral power he did authorize US navy ships to fire on German naval units that attacked any US vessel.
Not sure what your point is, but Hitler and his plans for an empire based on racial genocide were an existential threat to all civilization and would only be defeated militarily. Churchill and Roosevelt (and others) realized that fact early on whereas many did not.

Russia was not backward by European standards; it was backward by any standard. Beyond the cities, which had few native Slavic residents, the Russian Empire was little better than India under the British Raj. Social capital was the preserve of Jews, Poles, Volga Germans, and a small Slavic aristocracy representing less than one percent of the population, the masses of native Slavs and Central Asians where ignorant peasants.
After the Russian revolution, the elite had been eliminated by death and immigration. The VAST majority of Soviet citizen where ILLITERATE; the growth in the knowledge and appreciation of Russian culture we see today among the masses is a result of Stalin’s education policies. If you would bother to study the matter you would see how far they came in a short period of time and how harsh Stalin had to be in order to achieve it. There where mass campaigns to get people to comb their hair and brush their teeth; and do you believe Russia started from a superior point than any third world country today?
In under a generation, Stalin turned a country of illiterate, innumerate, superstitious peasant substance farmers into an industrial nation of workers and a superpower. Was there a terror and the death of 10 million+ people in the process; Yep, but no pain, no gain. Moreover, the Terror was a necessary part of the process. Stalin took, not the sons and daughters of peasants, but rather those same peasant and made them physicist and engineers. The book “Stalinist Values” covers quite a bit of the policies Stalin used to force the peasantry into modernity; everything from education, to personal and public hygiene, to manners, and traditional family values; often carried out with the threat of starvations or exile for failure.
Many would argue the price was too high; I say bull sh*t. How many have died in third world from starvation, war, disease; seems like the death of a fraction of that total for complete industrial development, modernity, and superpower status is a pretty good bargain.
Stalin did not raid the national treasury to deposit it in Switzerland as many far less brutal dictator have done, nor did he enrich his family and friends; he worked to develop his nation the best way he know how.
If being a humanitarians means never harming anyone; indulging the masses in their imbecility; and placing the direction of society at the caprice of ignorant and degraded multitudes; than Stalin was as far from a humanitarian as you can get. However, if being a humanitarian means bring people out of ignorance and degradation; leaving a material and cultural inheritance to future generation greater than what you inherited; and providing the fundamental basis for future and greater achievement; then again, Stalin was the greatest humanitarian to ever live.
“He brought us out of the darkness of nonexistence, shaped us into a polity, made us a world power, and showed the world that we too are human beings.”
- A former Gulag Prisoner’s comments on Stalin
All the charities, NGOs, and fundraisers to aid third world nations are a reflection of the fact that the peoples of these nations are regards as mere animals requiring external preservation, pity, aid, etc.; it is the same motivation that drives campaigns to save the Whale, the rain forest, or whatever nonsense and often why those causes are place above the well-being of the populations of third world nations.
It is also why we find so many commentators telling aspiring nations “not to try too hard”, that “it takes centuries to develop”, “you need social capital first”, and “it cannot be done in a generation”.
What they are really saying is “we don’t want you to be our equals”; “we cannot believe you are capable of the same things as we”, “It is presumptuous of you too even think you can achieve what we have”. So again, they discourage them; they say “the Asian have always done well, you are not like them”; “IQ is genetically determined, your population can never catch up”. If the masses of black and brown people in the third world achieve first world status, whom will we pity? If those “low IQ countries” can produce physicist and engineer and counting edge technology, to whom will Westerners feel superior?
The “brutal” dictator Stalin made (AND I CANNOT OVER EMPHASIS THE WORD MADE) his nation catch up and showed the world his people were human beings.
The West distaste for Stalin is a reflection of its own effeminacy and moral rot; Stalin got it done by any means necessary and that is how civilization is built and maintained. As for its eventual collapse; as Toynbee said; “Civilization is born in order, grows in liberty, and dies in chaos”; don’t put the cart before the horse, it is order that is needed before liberty. I marvel with awe at Stalin’s will and accomplishments.

The majority of the criticism agaisnt Stalin is purely ideologically based and never addresses his accomplishments. It is easy for people to say what should've of been done (not allowing the millions to die under Stalin), but real life is much more chaotic and unforgiving, the fact that Stalin was able to do and accomplish what he did is astounding, he turned a largly argarian, unindustrialized society into one of the leading scientific, cultural, industrial powers of the world. All while winning WW2 and expanding Russia territory and influence tremendously.

Yes, he was a brutal autocrat, but he was one of the most brilliant and skilled leaders the world has seen.

What truely amazes me is that Stalin was able to Industrialize Russia so quickly with virtually no trade of Direct investment just by shere force of will alone.
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It would be interesting to see a chart comparison of different autocracies around the late 1800s to the beginning 1900s and their speed of development

The USSR did not become a "leading" anything under Stalin's rule, other than a leading aggressive imperialist dictatorship. Adopting basic industrialization principles can hardly be credited to Stalin. And what particular cultural "accomplishments" may be credited to Stalin escapes the imagination, much less the facts of history. Stalin did not "win" World War II, he almost lost it, despite fighting an opponent who was stretched out on two fronts. Stalin's use of unarmed combatants is well documented. That is neither "brilliant" nor "skilled," just crude, vicious, and genocidal.

"Russia was not backward by European standards; it was backward by any standard." That is precisely what Hitler decided to be the case given the RACIAL INFERIORITY of the SLAVS. He was totally wrong as is your comment.

Are you stupid? Within three years of Stalin’s death the Soviet Union was first to launch a satellite into space; within seven the first to launch a man into space. Far from basic industrialization, when Stalin was done with the Soviet Union they had indigenous capabilities in every field of science and industry, including rocketry, jet engines, and computing; something not even Britain had. To try to diminish the accomplishments of Stalin by denying that the Soviet Union was a world power at the end of World War Two is ridiculous.

Given the rapid economic growth that the Tsarist Russia experienced leading up to the WW1, your claim that Stalin's brutality was necessary to bring modernity to Russia is completely wrong. You are merely parroting the self-serving propaganda perpetuated by the Soviet regime, whose coup d'etat was actually responsible for a devastating civil war that set Russia back by many years.

If merely making an argraian country into a industrial powerhouse rivaling the US in just a decade was easy than everyone would have done it. The production numbers speak for themselves (during ww2) with the USSR at 1989 still being the second largest economy in the world.

Nearly six million people died in Africa from 1998-2003 during the second Congolese War with nothing to show for their misery and suffering; if a “Stalin” had worked to death six million people, but the country now looked like Singapore, would that not be a superior result? We don’t live in a perfect world of perfect choices and outcomes. A pre-industrial country is a harsh and brutish place indeed and death and famines are common and regular; if someone can make these deaths worth something, fine; better to suffer for something than for nothing.

Well, Hitler’s racist ideas that a peoples living standards are a reflection of innate ability and not the chance and forces of history was quite popular at the time and is still quite mainstream. Many Westerners looked at the poor backward Slavic peasant and thought he was not capable of anything more; Stalin put a gun to his head and said, “You are going to be an engineer comrade”. Stalin was the redeemer of nations!

The whole point is that the industrialization changes caused the instability that led to the fall of the tsarist government.
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Could have Stalin or any leader given the instabilities of social and exponentialy rapid economic growth maintained stability? at the same time winning ww2? wihtout Stalin policvies? I very much doubt it.
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Economic, industrialization during the the late 1800s under imperial Russia was sparse and sporadic and isolated and led to 6% to 8% growth rates, 80% of that was lost after WW1, after the Blosheviks took control and under Stalin growth rates soared to 20%. The economic growth and social change where deeper, farther spread and more rapid, they don't even compare to Imperial Russian growth rates or penetration.

I see, so you're one of those "ends justify the means" types. Good on ya. It's my guess that none of your relatives was killed by Stalin's ridiculous policies/paranoia; I'd venture to guess that you've never been to Russia.
No doubt you're a Mao apologist, as well.
I guess it takes all kinds, but I'll always err on the "not killing millions of our own people" side. Call me crazy.
By the way: 1) Russia is still nowhere near the level of development of Singapore, so your hypothetical is just that--hypothetical; and 2) The Congolese War was a WAR, which is distinct from implementing disastrous policies resulting in the deaths of millions and distinct from having people killed due to outright paranoia.

You are an idiot; stop commenting before you have done any research. The Russian Empire saw no significant growth outside of its Polish settlements and major urban centers West of the Urals; and again the population of most of the Empire’s urban areas was non-Slavic. Not to mention that after the First World War, Western nations enacted aggressive trade barriers and restrictions that would have made an export led growth model impossible and in the 1930s there would have been no access to capital markets to finance development. Had Russia not pursued a policy of Stalinist development, it would still have been a backward agrarian society when the Nazis invaded and would have been overwhelmed.

I have been to Russia and I have never had a Russian under 55 disagree with my position on what Stalin did for the Soviet Union; sometimes they blame his subordinates, but are usually appreciative of Stalin. Mao was incompetent; the Great Leap Forward caused the death, but without the outcomes and yes, end always justify mean. I am going to guess that you are Westerner and as such cannot comprehend these choices or have ever seen with your own eyes, let alone lived, the misery that is pre-industrial living. Million are going to die ANYWAY; better they die building up the nation than merely from famine, tribal war, or disease. As for Russia’s level of development; again, it was a super power!

The bloody myth of economic "development" under Stalin was quickly repudiated by Khrushchev and many economic researchers AFTER the great MONSTER died. Russian and Ukrainian Agriculture were DESTROYED and NEVER recovered! Increase in production was obtained by blood NOT by brains nor greater productivity nor efficiency. Technology was PLUNDERED from abroad not created by incentives nor rational economics.
The collapse of Russian Industry after the fall of communism and the opening of Russia to the World Economy provides irrefutable proof that a SLAVE Society is NOT a developed Advanced Economy nor Culture.

Stalin lifted these people into modernity and gave them the benefits of a modern industrial society; point stop. The terror was necessary to force the people to change their entire way of life and thinking so that they could support an industrial civilization. Let’s deal with reality and not fairy tale world where “goodness and kindness” change the world rather than force and power.

What is the blind, idiotic rhetoric? The idea that Stalin's advances weren't worth the millions who died under his ill-conceived policies? Well, if that's idiotic than I relish my idiocy.
By the way, while the USSR became a real military power, it was nowhere close to the level of advancement that was enjoyed in Western countries. The ability to put a satellite in orbit is quite neat, but building decent roads would have been even more impressive.

Facts NEVER speak for themselves because they have to be discovered and determined and put in a comprehensible order to say anything. If you knew how many grains of sand were on a beach: what would you know? Thirty million PLUS violent deaths under Stalin in territory he controlled says a LOT to me and NOTHING to you. For you all these VIOLENTLY MURDERED PEOPLE are just GRAINS OF SAND!

The USSR started from a very low level of development. Anyone who allowed modern industrial methods to take hold there would have seen a significant increase in economic development. Just how far the USSR lagged behind Western nations is evident, singular achievements such as Sputnik notwithstanding.
The crucial point, however, is that you ignore or gloss over the fact that Stalin was the greatest mass murderer of all time. The Holodomor -- the man-made famine in Ukraine -- alone took the lives of up to 10 million innocent men, women and children and had nothing to do with progress. It was genocide.
You write that the "terror was necessary." This is easily disproven by the many examples of much greater economic progress achieved in Western democracies, which did not involve the kind of mass murder which Stalin engaged in. The terror was necessary to keep this "prison of nations" together. Naturally, in time it fell apart without a single shot being fired, as coerced empires do.

There was no economic miracle. It was just illusion. The Soviet economic system began with a belief that "the problem with capitalism is that it produces for profit instead of for people's needs," and they set out to build a system that produced directly for people's needs and not at all for profit. "There was a period early in Soviet life when it was argued that the Soviet worker and manager would work because of their enthusiasm for the revolution and their ideological fervor. That phase passed rather quickly."1 Because use of markets violated Marxist ideology, there was only one system of coordination possible. A system of central planning evolved; a system in which all decisions about what people needed were decided from the top.

To see how this system worked, consider how the operator of a shoe factory in the United States would make decisions. His major concern would be whether he could sell at a profit the shoes he made. In the Soviet Union, however, profit was of no concern to the manager of the state-owned shoe factory. Neither did he worry about selling the shoes. His only concern was to produce what he was told to produce, and if he could do that, both he and the workers of the plant received sizable bonuses. The problem the Soviet Union had was that it is very difficult to specify in physical terms what a manager should do. (If you do not believe this, try to write down a set of instructions specifying what sort of shoes should be produced. Remember, instructions to produce "good shoes" or "attractive shoes" involve instructions that are not measurable.) The Soviet Union produced huge numbers of shoes that no one would buy because they were of such low quality.

Or consider a nail factory. If it were told to produce as many nails as possible, it would produce only small nails. If told to produce as large a weight as possible, it would produce only very large nails. The Soviet Union wasted billions of rubles searching for energy because it rewarded drilling crews on the basis of the number of feet drilled. Because it is easier to drill many shallow wells than a few deep wells, drillers drilled lots of shallow wells, regardless of what was advisable geologically.

Stalin DIDN'T industrialize Russia. He enslaved it and starved many people so he could put some people in factories built by foreign interests ( like Henry Ford) and work them with terror rather than rational compensation. The whole system was driven by terror and theft rather than rational economics. Russia is still a primitive economy today because Stalin really didn't construct anything but a giant slave labor camp which collapsed when terror was gone.

Stalin DIDN'T industrialize Russia. He enslaved it and starved many people so he could put some people in factories built by foreign interests ( like Henry Ford) and work them with terror rather than rational compensation. The whole system was driven by terror and theft rather than rational economics. Russia is still a primitive economy today because Stalin really didn't construct anything but a giant slave labor camp which collapsed when terror was gone.

"The West distaste for Stalin is a reflection of its own effeminacy and moral rot" - typical NKVD/KGB/FSB propaganda.

I would argue that "distaste" for Stalin, Hitler and the likes is normal for any thinking human being, not just for the "West". The country I was born in (Belarus) was literally devasted by the duo (Hitler + Stalin).

You assume that Russian Empire and later USSR was a homogenious society which is not true. Indeed, Stalin contributed to educating millions of illiteral peasants in central Russia and Asia and creating industries in underdeveloped parts of the huge Soviet empire.

At the same time, Stalin and his regime organized killing of millions of farmers,priests, scientists (including close to 100% national intelligencia on the periphery of the empire). Non-tecnical intellectuals were specifically targeted by Stalinism and only the need to develop military technologies spared many scientists and engineers.

"I marvel with awe at Stalin’s will and accomplishment".

I'm sorry if you did not have a chance to experience the pleasures of living under Mr. Stalin back in the 20-s, 30-s, 40-s, and 50-s.
I wouldn't be surprised you you did ...your way of thinking is typical for a retired KGB officer .. "yes, he had to kill a few millions but what a country, what a superpower we got". Indeed, what a country, what a power it was.....all those nuclear warheads and submarines while large portion of polpulation still didn't have a water closet. Many still don't.

I've been spending 50% of my time in Russia since 1995.
You must have found a wild-life stalinist park....

With a few exceptions, love of Stalin is inversely proportional to the level of the person's education and intellect.
Notable exceptions: persons over 75 plus retired KGB/FSB and military personnel...many who belong to these 2 groups are not stupid but truly love uncle Joe.

Unless you lived and worked in Russia prior to Stalin; you don’t know what you are talking about. The little structure Russia enjoys today (roads, pipelines, sewage systems, water systems, and rail ways) is a legacy of Stalinist industrialization.

Western countries underwent hundreds of years of development before industrializing; the Russians did not have that luxury. Russia was not a pre-industrial economy; it was a peasant subsistence economy and the idea it could spend 200 years reliving the course of social development turning peasant into works (not to mention it did not have a culture that would incline it toward that) is absurd. Stalin saw that Russia would be invaded and said so in his first speech to the communist party as paramount leader in 1922; had Stalin not forcibly industrialized the Soviet Union (focusing on military hardware and heavy industry) it would have been overrun. The fact that the Soviet Union was able to hold out and eventually overcome the Germans after only 19 years of industrializing is a testament to Stalin genius. For people like you; you would think it better for Stalin to have been kind and gentle and then the Nazi could have exterminated the entire Soviet population rather than the 20 million they got. Furthermore, let me point out that there have only been three non-Western nations to industrialize since World War Two (excluding Arab petro states); none were democratic. Singapore was and is a one party state; South Korea transformed under the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979), and Taiwan was under martial law from 1945-1987. The leaders of these countries were able to use authoritarian instead of totalitarian methods because their respective populations were starting out more culturally advanced than Soviet peoples.

Western countries underwent hundreds of years of development before industrializing; the Russians did not have that luxury. Russia was not a pre-industrial economy; it was a peasant subsistence economy and the idea it could spend 200 years reliving the course of social development turning peasant into works (not to mention it did not have a culture that would incline it toward that) is absurd. Stalin saw that Russia would be invaded and said so in his first speech to the communist party as paramount leader in 1922; had Stalin not forcibly industrialized the Soviet Union (focusing on military hardware and heavy industry) it would have been overrun. The fact that the Soviet Union was able to hold out and eventually overcome the Germans after only 19 years of industrializing is a testament to Stalin genius. For people like you; you would think it better for Stalin to have been kind and gentle and then the Nazi could have exterminated the entire Soviet population rather than the 20 million they got. Furthermore, let me point out that there have only been three non-Western nations to industrialize since World War Two (excluding Arab petro states); none were democratic. Singapore was and is a one party state; South Korea transformed under the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979), and Taiwan was under martial law from 1945-1987. The leaders of these countries were able to use authoritarian instead of totalitarian methods because their respective populations were starting out more culturally advanced than Soviet peoples.

Stalin never hid the terror; in fact when he ordered films to be made about Ivan the Terrible (the Tsar who created the first Russian state by driving the Mongols out) he told them not to down play Ivan’s use of terror to get the boyars (Russian aristocrats) under control and cooperative enough to drive the Mongols out of Russia and create a sovereign state. At the end of the day, whatever childlike moral hand wring you want to do, Stalin succeeded in industrializing the Soviet Union and lifting its ignorant backward degraded peoples into modernity; dealing with the West on EQUAL terms; that is all that matters. Curse him all you want; the dead will still be dead and you cannot undo what he accomplished. Stalin foresaw it all when he warned of his legacy; “Gratitude is a sickness suffered only by dogs”, but he gave us a guideline when he said; “I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will”.

Astonishing and saddening that a mass murderer is considered as a hero because he got things done. What you don't know is how Russia would have developed if it had matured into a social democracy when the absolute monarchy was discredited after WWI.

No it did not hold its own in military technology as the decades of the Cold War passed by it slipped steadily behind. By a system of vast secrecy and periodic carefully staged demonstrations of new tanks/guns/planes etc it largely pulled the wool over the west's eyes. When a Soviet pilot defected in a MIG23 (to Japan I think) US experts were amazed how crude the plane really was.

"if being a humanitarian means bring people out of ignorance and degradation; leaving a material and cultural inheritance to future generation greater than what you inherited; and providing the fundamental basis for future and greater achievement; then again, Stalin was the greatest humanitarian to ever live."

Amazing piece of Kremlin propaganda, - as drafted back in the early 1950s and now repeated by an ignorant and naive mental slave.

"I marvel with awe at Stalin’s will and accomplishments."

Of course, because you are both ignorant and stubbornly silly.
Fortunately, there are not many like you. Don't rejoyce, there will be no 'second coming' for Stalin and his gangsters.

Naive people justify Stalin because, in their view, Stalin a) was a "successful dictator" in WWII and because of his industrialisation drive; b) his deeds apparently were not as bad as Hitler's; c) his communist ideology was more palatable.

The first argument, a "successful dictator" is taken directly from recent Kremlin propaganda books that glorify the WWII victory while glossing over everything else. To separate the bad from the good, ignoring that they are both part of one whole, is what propaganda is all about.
b) One should never forget Stalin's often-quoted words: "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." Hitler and Stalin shared one thing in common – both were willing to sacrifice tens of millions of people in the pursuit of their ideological vision. Hitler was building a 'New Europe', Stalin was building a new communist empire. For both human lives became a pathway to long term aims. Tens of million of sacrifices indeed became plain statistic.
c) Somebody posed a valid question: “But what does it matter to those who died what Stalinism developed into? What does it matter to the dead and their families whether they were starved for being kulaks, shot for writing "nationalist" literature,... or killed for being Slavs and resisting the Nazis, thus making way for a perfect racial empire? "

The apparent aim of Stalin's terror – the socialist utopia – seems more noble to some ignorant and naive than Hitler's vision of racial perfection.
How ignorant can some people get ?

I'm sorry, you're very earnest, but you write with the naivete and myopia of a sophomore History major.

One day, you will (hopefully) understand that the ends do not always justify the means. The scars that Stalin left are indelible and are far worse than the good his initiatives (many of which were abject failures, by the way) brought.

What's funnier is that YoungWeber almost speaks with the conviction of someone who has lived a hundred years, and has seen it all.

It does not seem to occur to him that his Sputnik example took place during the Khruschev era, not Stalin's. Did Stalin form the basis of that Soviet scientific prowess? Probably. But he did not need to kill millions for that - this thought does not occur to this advocate of all murderers in history.

You speak without knowledge; you are all fools without understanding. Your quote was not made by Stalin; it is falsely attributed to him, but was made by Leonard Lyons. Russian cannot support a democracy now, yet I am to believe that when Russians were as degraded and poor as Indians (in the middle of a global depression and with hostile neighbors ) they would have developed into mature democracy; absurd. Russia would have made no progress without Stalin and would have been overwhelmed by the Nazis. What do you think Stalin was supposed to do, say to the peasants, “Please, for your own good, give up your entire way of life and uproot yourself adopting an entirely new set of values and habits for the good of the nation”? That was tried and it failed; they were a peasant peoples with no sense in their head and they needed to be forced into working, thinking, and acting. You are all foolish idealist; the kind that let the nation rot because you are too afraid or too “moral” to use force and violence to achieve the outcomes that must occur if the nation is going to survive. In this world people suffer; that is the nature of life, but you can either suffer for something or suffer for nothing. Because of Stalin, Russia survived and defeated the Germans (occupying via puppet government half they country for 45 years); because of Stalin, Russia dealt with the West as an equal; because of Stalin, Russia today enjoys self-determination. If you ever bother to read what the Soviet people (excluding the Baltic states) had to say about Stalin, you would know they were grateful. Do you think death is the worst fate in life; try subjugation, poverty, and degradation; degradation so low that you don’t even know you are ignorant and degraded. If I knew that giving up my life would allow my progeny to be free from subjugation, ignorance, and degradation, allowing them all the opportunities of modernity, I would gladly give up my life and only regret that I had only one life to give. Your idealism and “moral” hand wring will not change or save anyone, but rather lead to paralysis and collapse. Stalin made the hard choices for the Soviet Union and completed his task; for that he must be remembered as not only a great humanitarian, but a great savior of civilization on par with Gudea and Sargon.

HyunSmith: You really should at least read the links you post here. According to Wikipedia, the USSR's GDP not increasing from 1938 to 1945, even dropping slightly. Hardly an "industrial powerhouse."
Just curious as to where you get your impressions from, old Soviet propaganda or the new propaganda disseminated by neo-communist/neo-fascist Russians headed by LiliPutin himself, who glorify Stalin.
The myth of a "powerful" USSR was destroyed upon its collapse. Naturally, even this inefficient, brutal and anti-human dicatatorship was able to achieve Something, hardly surprising for an empire with a population of close to 300 million. But their gross inefficiency is a well-known fact today, at least to those who can read Wikipedia.

Excellent continuation of your topic, YoungWeber. It is clear that you are a Russian and your exposing how many Russians think, actually *believe* should be very edifying to Westerners. You and your people remain under a number of delusions which continue to hamper Russia's growth and modernization. Holding on to Stalin as a model is only one of your many outrageous, ridiculous and harmful habits, which will continue to hold Russia back from entering the community of civilized nations of the world.

I am not a Russian and considering the multitude of sins and crimes the West has commited (far surpassing what Stalin did) upon other peoples in the world; they are in no postition to question how others reach modernity. At least the Russians paid for their modernity with their own boold and tears and not the blood and battered bodies of Black slaves, Native Americans, and Indians. The progeny of those who died under Stalin got to enjoy their forefathers sacrafice; the descendents of the African slaves worked to death on Western plantations have nothing, but their own bitterness and other peoples hatred.

"...the USSR at 1989 still being the second largest economy in the world.."

Wake up, this book is about Stalin who died in 1953, its not about 1989 !!
Have you never heard of Krushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, or even Gorbachov ?
Oh, those numbers make your head go round and round, don't they ?

"Unless you lived and worked in Russia prior to Stalin; you don’t know what you are talking about"
Either you are at least 90 years old ( prior to Stalin, eh !!) or you really don't know what you are talkng about.

“I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will”.
The lives of all 3 great dictators (Stalin, Hitler, Mao)is a proof that will power and charisma alone can be pure evil. Even if you sincerely believe that "the ends justify the means" , the countries under their directions ended up badly and regained some kind of "normality" only after their deaths. Stalin successfully converted huge natural and human resources into the piles of weapons killing millions in the process and making life miserable for the rest . Great accomplishment indeed!

“Gratitude is a sickness suffered only by dogs”

I met some Russians living in N. America and Russia who adore Stalin... mostly retired military and KGB personnel. They probably have good reason to be thankfull to Stalin - he gave meaning to their otherwise miserable lifes in the former USSR.

Only an amoral person, such as you, YoungWeber, can justify one atrocity by reference to other atrocities. This is a bland and brazen admission of your lack of any moral compass. For you, building roads justifies killing millions of innocent people.
All that remains is to wish that you and your close ones (if you have any) live under an instatiable mass murderer such as Stalin so that your degraded amorality dies with you.

Let’s say that over the last forty years 20 million people have died in my country from war, disease, famine, civic strife, and natural disaster. Then along comes a man who, without expressions of sympathy or pity, forces discipline and order upon the people and modernizes the country. He introduces industrial agriculture so that we no longer starve; he builds water and sewage treatment plants, creates technical school and universities, builds heavy industries needed to create modern infrastructure. Now let us say in the process of lifting us into modernity he kills five million people; should I hate him for that; should I say he could have done it another way? What an ungrateful wretch I would be for not being grateful to such a man. Take a trip to a truly hellish place like the Congo where 15 million people have dies since 2000 and 33% of women and 25% of MEN have been raped; and you would understand why people would be grateful to such a man. We don’t live in a world of perfect choices; there are many places on earth, right now, where Stalin Russia would be paradise in comparison.

That's crazy. People did not just "die," they were deliberately murdered. The famines which took place included the genocidal Holodomor, in which up to 10 million people died, not because of lack of "industrial agriculture," but because of a *deliberate* policy of pacifying the Ukrainians, who were rebellious of Soviet dictatorial rule. This was done, deliberately, by Stalin. In addition, Stalin orders the killing of tens of thousands of intellectuals, the cream of society, and they are dragged from their homes at night and shot and their bodies dumped in mass graves. This had nothing to do with modernization. Then, over the course of decades, millions of political prisoners are incarcerated in hellish prisons, the Gulag, only for their beliefs.
This was no paradise, but truly a hell on earth. Stalin did not lift the various subjugated nations out of anything, he imposed a regime of terror and mass murder.
But you seem to like mass murder. For you, Idi Amin is also a hero because he built roads and children went to school.
As a result of the Stalin period the nations of the Soviet Union were thrown back in development so that when the USSR collapsed, they lived in poverty, much of the population without running water, gas, paved roads, etc. You are either fantasizing or lying outright. The USSR was not "modern" in any sense of the word and its former subjugated nations are still struggling to catch up at least to some extent with the real, developed Western nations that comprise the world community of civilized countries.
You constantly try to tie in "order" and "modernity" (which are falsities in any event as to the USSR) with mass murders. That's insane, which is easy to prove. Because THERE WAS NO NEED TO DELIBERATELY MURDER TENS OF MILLIONS IN ORDER TO BUILD FACTORIES, ROADS, SCHOOLS AND SO ON. These mass murders only retarded development. Get that through your thick, insane, stupid head.

HyunSmith, please, don't make us all laugh. You are evidently YoungWeber under a different account. Nice try. Even your phraseology is the same.
Get it through your thick skull, the USSR WAS NEVER MODERN, it was never a "power" other than in the military sense.
Travel in the Russian countryside, even today, two decades after the collapse of the USSR, and you'll see most villages without paved roads, sometimes without natural gas, living a subsistence economy dating back to the feudal period.
Stalin regarded the development of Russian, in particular, for decades and the country is still trying to catch up to the developed, democratic Western world.
You are laughable if you think any of this typical RU-propaganda makes a mark at all in the normal, civilized West.

No one is denying that Stalin actively killed those people or allowed them die as punishment for non-cooperation; the issue is over the results generated and whether or not it could have been done a different way. Going back to my Congo example; how would you disarm the tribal warlords; by asking them nicely? How would you get a population use to robbing and raping whenever and whomever they please to stop; by patiently explaining to them? How would you get the population to be cooperative to a program of discipline, rules, and development; with hugs and kisses? Let’s get real; like Stalin, you warn them once and then you shoot them in the head if they disobey; eventually you will weed out the recalcitrant; otherwise you will never make any progress. As for intellectuals who were shoot, many where providing cover for extremely destructive behavior.
With regard to the Soviet Union being a modern country; they were first in space; first to put up a satellite, had ICBM capabilities, and nuclear technology. The Soviets where at the forefront of science and even today Russia still has excellent aeronautical capabilities and is a world leader in commercial satellite launch; you cannot deny this simply because you dislike the way it was achieved. Stalin’s system was not perfect; a command economy is inferior to a fascist economy just as a fascist economy is inferior to a market economy, but a command economy is miles ahead of a subsistence economy and Russians were never going to produce an industrial market economy without first passing through a phase of command economics. The system died after Stalin’s death because it left no room for liberty which is needed if civilization is going to grow, but as Toynbee said; “Civilizations are founded in order, grow in liberty, and die in chaos”; Stalin provided the order and system.
As for Mr. Smith, he and I are not the same person and we have divergent views; just not on this matter. If you bothered to look at our comment histories you would see that. As for Westerners being civilized, the world is coming to see that Westerner pretense of civilization is hollow cry to excuse themselves from retribution for their blood soaked crimes.

Your attempts to portray mass murder as necessary are risible. Of course there are and have always been means of developing a country in a civilized fashion, the rule-of-law, democratic institutions, a developed law enforcement mechanism and so forth. That is precisely how developed Western countries have gotten where they are - to the forefront of civilization. Examples abound, Ireland following independence, the US civil war and so on.
You DO NOT go around deliberately murdering tens of millions. You just don't get it, these mass murders were needed not for progress, but to keep the USSR together by force, since it had enslaves a series of other nations, who wanted their freedom.
Your comment on intellectuals is classic idiocy: what "cover" for what "extremely destructive" behavior were they providing, any rational soul would wonder.
Stop trying to propagate lies about the USSR. As I've written before, even an inefficient, murderous dictatorship can achieve something, particularly if all its resources are thrown at the task and the USSR was nothing if not a military power. But, as just one example, in the 1980's the USSR had as many miles of paved roads as the one state of California. There is your so-called "modernity" and "development." They just were not there, get that through your thick, stupid skull.
You, YoungWeber, are trolling these completely immoral, illogical and irrational statements because you can, the way a dog can lick its balls. You only demonstrate your own lack of morality, common sense or decency.
You are a sick, sick person and I don't feel sorry for you. Keep writing crap about the USSR, you'll keep exposing yourself, which is just fine. Unlike you, I live in the former USSR and I know what I'm talking about.

You talk about the rule of law, law enforcement, and democratic institutions, but you don’t answer the question how those things can be established if you first don’t have order. Again; what are you supposed to do with armed non-state actors, ask them “pretty please, lay down your weapons”. How about armed paramilitary criminal gangs, say “it would be best if you didn’t do that”. You say you live in the former USSR; how did Russia fair under that weakling Yeltsin? Criminal gangs ran wild in Russia until Putin came along; is Putin without issues, no, but he is the best thing POSSIBLE for Russia. The Western states too had their periods of absolutist regimes and bloodshed. As I said before, you cannot undo what Stalin did; so get over it. The very fact that you know how to read and write is a legacy of Stalin’s policies.

First of all, you are making up an utterly non-factual and untrue hypothetical regarding a lack of order in the pre-Soviet Union and the pre-Stalin period. There was no disorder, the Russian Revolution notwithstanding, since that was provoked, encouraged and organized by the communists.
Secondly, Yeltsin is no indicator, try Saakashvili, or any of the Baltic states. The gaps in your alleged argumentation are so huge as to defy the imagination of the rational mind.
Pointing to bloodshed in the past histories of developed Western democracies in an attempt to justify Stalin's mass murders and terror is like pointing to a child molester to justify your engaging in incest, which you would say "helped in your own (molested) child's development." These are wrongs that: 1) did not in any way enhance development, to the contrary, and they 2) were evil and wrong.

Read and write? The European nations of the Soviet Union were literate long before Stalin came along. One can only wonder at what product you are, of the RU-net, of marginal Western radical philosohpy, or just plain dumb.

The Baltic States are Western; Russia is a part of Orthodox civilization, thus the comparison does not apply. As for Saakashvili, really, that say a lot about you; but, Georgia does produce great leaders; it produced Stalin. You clearly are ignorant of your own history if you think there was no disorder in pre-Stalinist Russia, but we are done here. All you have done is condemn and insult, but you have given no specifics as to alternatives to Stalin’s action. Again, how would you disarm paramilitary groups, criminal gangs, and violent individuals? How would you make people unaccustomed to observing law behave in a civil manner? You live in a fantasy world where love and kindness (kisses and lollipop) solve all problems; luckily for Russia a real man with a brain and understanding came along and dealt with reality.

You deserve both condemnation and insults, for your rabid amorality and lies.
You are also laughable, which I very much enjoy showing to everyone who reads our posts, since you cannot come up with any specifics about alleged "disorder" requiring people being shot in the head. Crazy stuff!

You don’t present arguments; just shell out condemnations and emotional appeals; you haven’t the slightest ability to make a rational argument. None of you have answered my question as to how you would have industrially prepared the Soviet Union in time for a Nazi invasion using methods alternative to Stalin. You are fools who comments out of ignorance and who think their opinions are facts; when cornered with facts, you make emotional condemnations; in short, as Martin Luther said of Latomus; “You completely close your mind and do nothing but shout, "Anathema, anathema, anathema!" so that by your own voice you are judged mad.” In today’s words it would simply be said that you and the other are so full of excrement that it is coming out of your mouth.

Your stupidity is staggering. You seem to genuinely believe that you are making an argument, as opposed to spewing out nonsense and non sequiturs. For the umpteenth time, there was no disorder, chaos or other calamities in the USSR which may have, hypothetically, in some fashion or at least partially, justified the mass murders of millions of innocent people. You've mentioned "paramilitary groups" and "armed paramilitary criminal gangs" - there were NONE in the USSR when Stalin took over and under his regime. This is sheer fantasy.

The Soviet Union under Stalin was not prepared to counter a Nazi invasion, which conquered practically the entire *evil empire* that was the USSR. Industrialization took place in all of Europe and the US without any mass murders taking place, the economies there were far, far more efficient that the dictatorship model and repression used by Stalin. That is how any country, including the nations of the USSR, could and should have prepared industrially, without mass murders. Get that through your thick, stupid skull.

You consistently fail to address the simple question of how deliberately murdering, for instance, ten million people during the Holodomor, the genocidal famine against the Ukrainian people, could possibly have helped industrialization and modernity. It did not. To the contrary, because all those people would have worked to the benefit of industrialization and modernization if they had not been killed, Stalin severely retarded the development of the countries enslaved in the Soviet Union. You make vague references to disorder in some African states, your "Congo example," which have nothing -- NOTHING -- in common with the USSR under Stalin.

My only emotion is utter disgust that you can write to this thread and spew the nonsense that is coming out of you. You are ridiculous and deserve all the ridicule you are getting, like a peadophile who would write to this thread and receive only condemnation in return for his "arguments."

“You think like this, "As I am a crude ass, and do not read the books, so there is no one in the world who reads them; rather, when I let my braying heehaw, heehaw resound, or even let out a donkey's fart, then everyone will have to consider it pure truth."

Martin Luther; Against the Papacy.

You stupid fool, you will not succeed in shouting me down; your emotionalized ignorance presented as facts is not an argument. You say there was no disorder in pre-Stalin Soviet Union; you show your imbecility and lack of research; Stalin took power in 1922, what about:

The White Russia Movement (1917-1923)

The Basmachi Movement (1916-1923)

Russian All-Military Union (1924)

The great famine was a byproduct of the move to collectivized industrial agriculture and lasted two years; however, with the exception of right after WWII, the Soviet Union never again experienced famine, while famine was routine in Tsarist Russia. Lastly, Western nations did not industrialize in 19 years; they did not industrialize in anywhere near the pace of the Soviet Union. Even after the Nazis reached the gates of Moscow, the breath of Stalin’s industrialization was so great that the Soviets were still able to equip and field armies from beyond the Urals. You say if those people had been left alive they would have happily worked for industrialization; you are naïve. No one, but Stalin had the vision or saw the threat on the horizon; peasant peoples are not willingly going to upend their lives for a vision and an urgency they don’t understand. Some elements in a society are destructive and are holding the entire society back; they must either be reformed (liquidated as a class) or eliminated (liquidated by being shoot) for the society to move forward. Your type of thinking would have lift the Soviet Union permanently chaotic and ill equipped; paving the way for a Nazi victory in WWII.

The Holodomor, or great death by famine, claimed the lives of up to 10 million innocent Ukrainians. It was no "byproduct," rather a deliberate starvation intended to pacify the Ukrainians, who had declared their independence just at the time that the Soviet Union was formed. The genocidal nature of the Holodomor is proven by numerous facts which demonstrate that: 1) Stalin knew about the famine, 2) Stalin did nothing to relieve the famine, but instead, did everything possible in order that the famine spread and claim as many lives as possible: the non-stop confiscation of all foodstuffs, up to and including grains of wheat according to the so-called "three-grains" rule, the summary execution of thousands of villagers (reported to Stalin personally) who attempted to obtain food so as not to starve to death, the non-stop exportation of grain outside the USSR while Ukrainians starved, the "black shingle" villages which were closed to any exits or entries, and so forth and so on. Thus there is no doubt that Stalin was responsible for the Holodomor.

What you write is sheer nonsense. Dozens of countries with pastoral and rural economies made the transition to industrialized societies WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR MASS MURDER, which you espouse.

You obviously know nothing about history. But you are absolutely right about one thing, namely, that a certain class -- the class of complete idiots, of which you are a leading member -- needs liquidation, preferably by being shot.

Yes, Stalin knew about the famine; he seized grain from peasants during the famine to feed workers in the cities and to export to pay for industrialization; Stalin used the famine as a tool to break the will of the peasants. I would only disagree on the number of deaths; I believe it was closer to six million. Again, you are overlooking the time factor and conditions. The Soviet union had only 19 years before it would be invaded (no country has industrialized in 19 years, except the Soviet Union, maybe S. Korea) and it was trying to developed during a time of trade barriers, protectionism, and later on, a global depression. I repeat, no non-Western country has ever developed without having at least an authoritarian government and the Soviet Union was the only country to industrialize from a base of subsistence peasants. Even Western nation industrialized under liberal, but not democratic governments (the USA being the only exception). Without Stalin’s period of terror, Russia would have to undergo at least a hundred year period (if everything went well) of peasants transitioning to a cash economy and division of labor before they could even attempt industrialization. However, the Nazi invasion was coming in19 years, but for Stalin the entire Slavic population would have been worked to death, not just 10 million and it would have been for the benefit of Germans and not their own progeny.
As for shooting me; if you don’t like Stalin, you clearly don’t have the balls to do it. I, however, would have no problem sending you to a GULAG; at least we would get some work out of you instead of useless whining.

Not the peasants, the Ukrainians. The area of effect of the Holodomor coincides with the territory of Ukraine. Doh!

Listen, moron, try to focus your miniscule brain and address the simple question of how killing millions of people helps a country to industrialize. These were the peasants who were producing food in the "breadbasket of Europe," which was how Ukraine was known at the time. Even your decrepit mental capacity must realize there is a contradiction in HAVING TO KILL PEOPLE WHO WERE GROWING FOOD IN ORDER TO "feed workers in the cities." Your moronic depths are incredible. Keep going. First it was mythical "armed gangs" which had to be shot in the head, now its peasants who had to be killed in order to ... feed people...

You repeat: "no non-Western country has ever developed without having at least an authoritarian government". All of Western Europe, the US, industrialized without an authoritarian government.
So now repeat this: "I am an idiot."

Killing productive population is your idea of "promoting" industrialization, the stupidity of this assertion boggles the mind.

All right weasel, put your money where your mouth (and pea-sized brain) is. What is your real name and where do you live. Time to get real, chicken-crapster.

The famine was across the Soviet Union and Stalin needed to push the peasants on to industrial farms which used modern equipment and methods so they would be more efficient in the long term. In general, the peasants refused to grow more food than they needed to feed themselves, so Stalin seized their foodstuff which forced them to meet quotas (using the new equipment supplied to them on the collectivizes farms) out of a desire to ensure they had a sufficient amount left over after the authorities took their share. You still have not offered an actual alternative particular to Russia; not what others have done, step by step, what Russia could have done.

READ YOUR COMMENT; it proves you are an idiot:
“You repeat: "no non-Western country has ever developed without having at least an authoritarian government". All of Western Europe, the US, industrialized without an authoritarian government.
I am not convinced you live in the former USSR and if you do, you clearly are not native. Lastly, buddy stick to the Internet, I would break your teeth down your throat.

"Stalin needed to push the peasants on to industrial farms..." SO HE KILLED THEM?! You complete moron, you. Stop spouting this nonsense or you'll draw the attention of qualified psychiatrists. Where do you get "the peasants refused to grow more food than they needed to feed themselves" -- this is total fantasy. Ukraine's breadbasket provided over 25% of all the food produced in the USSR. "New equipment"? Collective farms in the USSR used HAND LABOR to collect crops long after Stalin was dead.
You don't know what you are talking about and YOU ARE A CHRONIC LIAR.

Every Western country which industrialized, starting with the founder of industrialization, Britain, DID SO WITHOUT A DICTATORSHIP, WITHTOUT AUTHORITARIANISM AND WITHOUT MASS MURDERS.

There was never any doubt you'd chicken out, you pathetic little weasel.

And stop using that silly phrase "industrial farms," they were never "industrial," instead backward, grossly inefficient and rife with corruption, stealing and waste. This is absolutely an unquestioned fact which was made abundtantly clear after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was never a whiff of "modern equipment" on these farms, they were consistently greatly retarded in their development. Official statistics showed that in the Soviet Union small private gardens next to village houses, comprising only 4% of arable land, produced over a quarter of the empire's agricultural product. This is a given, *official* fact.
A "kommissar" came and sat in front of my grandfather's house for two straight days to try and see where the family was secretly getting minor scraps of food in order to feed itself and not dying from hunger, just in order to take away any small bits of food that remained hidden. This was completely deliberate, the biggest genocidal act in history.
Your drivel is an affront to the millions of innocent men, women and children who died for nothing. I do really wish you had lived under your hero, Stalin, and died like a whimpering little worm, with your belly distended from hunger.

Now, as for my comments on industrialization outside of the Soviet Union; I said:
"No NON-WESTERN country has ever developed without having at least an authoritarian government".
I repeat, NO NON-WESTERN (get that through your thick stupid moronic head), NO NON-WESTERN country has ever developed without at least an AUTHORITRAIN government; that means countries NOT of the West. Russia is NOT a part of Western Civilization.

YOU are the total racist, since your premise is that "the poor backward Slavic peasant" was incapable of democratic, free-market progress such as that engaged in by a host of other countries around the world. You BULL-SH*T RACIST!

You reference Medley, who goes against the grain of all the evidence and undeniable facts to try and argue an opposite conclusion as to the inefficiency of Soviet agriculture. Medley claims that chronic foodshortages in a strongly agricultural state "exist because of increased levels of consumption." That's risible. Unlike Medley and you, I know what it was like to live in the Soviet Union, the incredibly poor living standards, including as regards food consumption, which last to this day as a result of the negative inheritance from the inefficient Soviet era. You'll always find an idiot somewhere, because you yourself are proof of that indeed.

Unlike you I HAVE DIRECT KNOWLEDGE OF COLLECTIVIZED FARMING in the USSR, which was mostly subsistnce-level, with a few Potemkin-villages to show to idiot Westerners such as yourself.

As to your saying that no non-Western state has developed without authoritarianism -- that's just beautiful, you ignoramus, it's a f-cking tautology: no developed Western state has developed without Western development. That's why they are developed Western states, even though they include Asian contries, because they developed without useless, inefficient, mass murders and genocide. You can't even add one plus one.

You've ignored the incredible stupidity of yours which I've pointed out, namely, that massively killing peasants who produced food could not possibly have assisted, in any way shape or form, in fulfilling the need "to feed workers in the cities" (your own, moronic words).

Go ahead, step out into the street and shoot yourself in the head, Stalin would be proud of you.

I know it's impossible for you to think on even a primitive level, but for those reading this just imagine the incongruity of arguing for the "necessity" of having to kill millions of peasants in a largely agricultural region and bringing about chronic food deficits because of massive inefficiency, all in order to... get this: MODERNIZE!
You pathetic imbecile you. Drivel on, you slobbering moron...

It is pretty bold for an anti-Semite like you to call me a racist. The Slavic peasants (really all the peasants) of the Soviet Union were ignorant and degraded; they were illiterate, superstitious, innumerate, subsistence farms; Stalin brought them out of their darkness. I would not deny that the Eastern Slavs are the equal to Europeans today, but that most certainly was not the case 80 years ago; Stalin brought them up to par, kicking and screaming. The Soviet system was highly inefficient, but the command economy was the only route possible for rapid development in the Soviet context and far superior to the pervious subsistence economy; one wishes that, after laying the foundations, Stalin moved to a market economy after the war, but that did not happen. Stalin was far from perfect, but having studied the matter, no matter my or other peoples objections or reservations, I cannot see any alternative routes that would have worked; particularly quick enough to prepare for the Nazi invasion. There was mass death in Stalin’s industrialization of the Soviet Union, but there are those people who either out of malice or misguidedness are detriments not only to themselves, but to the country as a whole and they must either be broken and reformed or eliminated. I ask again, what would have happened to the peoples of the Soviet Union if Stalin had not done what he did; you keep talking about another way; get specific. Those Asian states that have become developed did so under authoritarian governments and there are many people like you who say the same about their leaders; there could have been another way, but they never get specific. Have you ever read the biography of Artem Ivanovich Mikoyan; see what Stalinist development meant to his life. The story of Stalin is really the greatest story of hope in human history; it means that no matter how backward, ignorant, degraded, or debased a people, if they have the right leader and are prepared to pay the price, through discipline and organization, they can reach the highest summits of power, knowledge, and capabilities in under a generation.

Go ahead, call me names, they won't stick, you provide no evidence and are simply showing your inefficacy in countering arguments and facts. Calling me names is about as effective as your immoral, completely false theories, which are based on lies.
Only an ignoramus such as yourself can characterize my land and my people in this fashion, as "degraded," because you don't know anything. Nothing about a nine thousand year history of civilization, the first domestication of horses, literature, art, culture. These were well developed long before Stalin came along. Through Stalin's Red Terror, the cream of society, tens of thousands of the most cultured and advanced artists, writers, cultural activists and others were grabbed up, often in the middle of the night, taken out to a remote location and shot in the head. This had nothing to do with modernization, or industrialization, or bringing the peasants into the cities. This was mass terror, mass murder designed to kill, intimidate and repress in order that the various nations imprisoned in the USSR, would not escape their captivity.
This is a typical and sheer LIE which you are are trying to propagate, that Stalin brought people "in darkness" "up to par," whereas the reality is exactly the reverse.
The USSR could have developed far more quickly and far more efficiently by allowing the energy of private enterprise to take its course, as was the case in any developed Western society. That was the only viable, human and moral alternative. If, instead of mass murder, democracy had been allowed to flourish, free markets develop, no question but that the USSR would not have had to kill two dozen million of its own citizens in World War II in order to sap the strength of the Nazi army. It would not have had to throw hundreds of thousands of unarmed people (who cannot be called "soldiers") against German machine guns. This is fact.
Democracy, free markets, this is as specific as it gets, the example being shown specifically by dozens of other countries, in Europe, in North America and, later in Asia. But Stalin chose repression, mass murder and backwardness. This backwardness lasted long after Stalin because he was part of a system. The Gulag was thought up by Lenin.
Authoritarianism in Asia cannot be compared to mass murder and genocide. This is an obvious point where it is evident to everyone that you are spouting drivel. South Korea's, Singapore's other Asian tiger leaders never mass murdered their people. South Korea was also highly agricultural, but became an industrial powerhouse by instituting the rule of law, democratic elections, a free press and private entrepreneurship. They never murdered millions of their own people. Authoritarianism is not equal to mass murder. Authoritariansim does not equal genocide.
China did murder its own people on a mass scale and that is why they are still trying to catch up in the third millenium to modern civilization, as opposed to those Asian countries who did not resort to genocide, such as South Korea. The facts are as clear as they can possibly get, yet you continued to spout utter nonsense about Stalin supposedly having to industrialize quickly to meet the Nazi threat... by murdering his own people!
No one says that industrialization did not take place in the USSR, it did. But mass murder had nothing to do with it. Peasants were not "brought up to par," they were killed off by the milliions in order to drive them into collective farms which were highly inefficient and brought about chronic food shortages, and in order to pacify the imprisoned nations of the USSR. It was these nations and their peoples who quickly exited the USSR in 1991, without a shot being fired. Yes, the first chance they got the peoples of the USSR forced the collapse and disintegration of the empire which Stalin had helped to shore up, albeit for a brief time only. Epic fail.
Asserting that murdering tens of millions somehow contributed to modernity or industrialization is sick, as you are, clearly the product of radical left-wing thought, living well in a developed Western society with democracy and free market capitalism, but despising it, because, inside, you despise yourself.
Mass murder cannot assist in modernization or industrialization. Fantasies about recalcitrant elements that had to be "shot in the head" are sick, have nothing to do with reality, and constitute outright lies. Nowhere have you indicated any facts or evidence for the "armed gangs" you spoke of, they are entirely a product of your demented fantasy. You are sick and your writing here only shows that to the world.
Thank you for the continued insults addressed to me, I take them as a compliment coming from an entirely sick person such as yourself. You cannot possibly insult me, because you are nothing, a twisted piece of crap.
Youngweber is a LIAR and a COWARD.

Exactly what was the impact that Stalin had on the economic growth of the Soviet Union, Hyun? You are amazed about what? The official Soviet Union statistics? There are revisionist studies, carried out by Soviet economists, that relate a far more modest history of growth during the Stalinist years.

I don't disagree with anything you say. I am surprised that a person that used the Moniker "Young Weber" would praise someone like Stalin. Most of the other commentators are too caught up in trivial to realize the paradox.

You praise Stalin for changing the "culture", but the Soviet Union collapsed less than forty years after his death. In one of your previous post

" It is culture and not technology that leads social changes; technology is only a tool and the drive of the culture is what causes its development."

If I am not mistaken, Stalin did sort of the opposite. Yes they the Soviets had many technological achievements, but was it sustainable? The economies of Ukraine and Russia post-Soviet Union, have simply reverted back to what they did prior to 1914. The Homo Sovieticus was molded by force, and once the state coercion and repression ceased to exist ....

Culture is difficult to change. I am not saying that strong leaders can't do it, they can. Those that appear successful like Stalin, ultimately at the end of day build a house of cards. In my opinion, the most successful was Pinochet. Pinochet's embrace of the free market, clean government still persist today after he retired. You compare Chile's level of corruption with other "Latin" countries, whether is in South America / Mediterranean, there is a big difference. The jury is still out as to how long this will last.

Bismarck,
To the contrary; it was Max Weber (being a member of the German Historical School) who stressed that there was nothing “natural” about the organization of society or even a “natural” flow of human development and history. Weber explained in detail that there are many prerequisite stages of societal development through which a people must pass before they can have a modern industrial society and not all people have even the prerequisite values to enter those stages let alone pass through them. Weber could be called the anti-Burke in as much as he sees that a society cannot move forward by just letting things take their “natural” course, but rather must be lead along by men (often working from the same “values” native to the society). In any event, Stalin fits that mold; he forced the Soviet Union to undergo 150 years (at least) of societal change in less than 30 years. Rapidly reshaping a people’s values, attitudes, and institutions is always a bloody affair.
As for its collapse after Stalin’s death; I have already said, “The system died after Stalin’s death because it left no room for liberty which is needed if civilization is going to grow, but as Toynbee said; “Civilizations are founded in order, grow in liberty, and die in chaos”; Stalin provided the order and system.” Stalin was really a one man show; no one should the vigor or energy to do bold thing after him; only to maintain what was already in place and isn’t that the heart of the peasant mentality; carrying on with what has always been done. Stalin’s inability to overcome the people’s peasant desire for a “traditional” way of life, a discomfort with change, is probably his greatest failing. It is said that during Stalin’s last conversation with Khrushchev, he told Khrushchev that his head was empty; that he did not see the enemies that surrounded the state and that without him (Stalin) “The Soviet Union would perish”; so it went.

A few, not-so-minor points which missed the review. Before World War II Stalin organized what is probably the biggest man-made famine in history, the Holodomor, in which up to 10 million men, women and children died, mostly in Ukraine. It was a vision of horror realized by the monster that was Stalin.
In addition, Stalin's right-hand man for many years was the Jew Lazar Kaganovich, who died peacefully of old age at a very old age. Many Jews participated in Stalins regime of terror.

Stop the Jew Bashing!! Stalin was as great an Anti-Semite as Hitler but more rational in his pursuit of Evil! Did you ever hear of the Doctor's Plot and Stalin's final plan to EXTERMINATE Jews from Communist Lands?? Stalin's usual slavish associates couldn't go there and Stalin died of "natural causes" before a new Genocide could get going! Evil is evil and Jew Bashing is Jew Bashing.

The participation of Jews in various leadership positions during the Stalin period is well documented. A fact such as this cannot be "Jew bashing," unless you are a Zionist, I suppose, and believe that Jews are not only "Chosen" but can never do any wrong.
Yes, Stalin was an anti-Semite, but he used Jews extensively for a long time.

Anyone who serves an utterly EVIL gang, movement or cause ceases to be a Jew! The same is true of members of any moral creed. If your behavior is at war with the beliefs you were taught defined the difference between Good and Evil, then your status as a member of the moral creed terminates. Judaism is NOT a race nor a racial concept anymore than Christianity is.

Hah! It's evident you don't know much, that's the main reason you cannot tutor someone else.
The State of Israel's Law on Return allows anyone whose mother was Jewish to claim citizenship. This blood test of ethnicity is administered by the most conservative religious rabbis.
In addition, needless to say, the vast majority of Jews identify themselves AS Jews, not as Israelis, or citizens of Israel, they are Jews and Israel is a Jewish state, as so often repeated by its Prime Ministers, Presidents and other leaders.
Get a clue.

It is indeed a politically blind generation of students who graduate these days without ever hearing the name “Genrikh Yagoda,” one of the greatest Jewish murderers of the 20th century, who served Stalin as the founder and commander of the NKVD. Yagoda diligently implemented Stalin’s orders to imprison and execute 'enemies-of-the-people' and is responsible for the deaths of many millions. After Yagoda, with
his mostly Jewish deputies, established the Gulag system, Stalin saw him as a potential threat. Yagoda was demoted and executed, and was replaced as chief hangman in 1936 by Yezhov, known as the “bloodthirsty dwarf.”
Yezhov was also 'blessed' with an active Jewish wife. So was the same Vyacheslav Molotov who signed the Hitler-Stalin Pact of August 1939. In his Book “Stalin: Court of the Red Star”, Jewish historian Sebag Montefiore wrote that Stalin was surrounded by young Jewish women. Indeed, one of Stalin's three wifes was Jewish, a sister of his close Jewish associate and Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich who was responsible for starving to death million of people in Ukraine and the Kuban region.

Jews are not a "race" except by 19th century outmoded and debunked "science". They have always been a people bound together by their beliefs and standards - i.e.their religion - which not all Jews follow: And since 1948 they have a modern state - Israel.

That would be arguable. Jews held together in communities for a thousand years despite -- or, possibly, because of -- widespread persecution in Europe, for example. They certainly do believe they are a race, going back over five thousand years.

Good review, which contains a serious contradiction: it is true that Cannibal-of-all-Times was determinedly friendly to Adolf Hitler, but not, as The Economist states, because he failed to see that the Western powers were not the same as Nazi Germany. Quite the opposite – he knew only too well that Nazism was very close to his own creed; that both Nazism and Communism were two sides of the same Left ideology, diametrically opposed to what Western powers were. Stalin and Hitler were rivals, but not enemies; both their parties assaulted the humankind under the red banner – one with sickle and hammer, the other with swastika. Slight difference in design, full concurrence in substance.
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There is a comment on this thread, by WT Economist, stating that Hitler and Stalin had “radically opposite ideologies“. This view is not just “radically” wrong. It is very often a result of purportedly carried out propaganda campaign by the Left who wouldn't admit their close kinship with Nazism. Stalin took up arms against Nazism only after Hitler betrayed his trust – before that the two Left regimes were for many years faithful allies, helped each other economically and started the World war II together.